There Will Be No More New Candidates

Bill Kristol cannot give up on the dream of new presidential candidates:

So: The race seems to be more open and fluid than conventional wisdom has it. In particular, it strikes me that as everyone focuses (understandably) on Romney, Cain, and Perry, Gingrich is increasingly well positioned for a serious challenge. And mightn’t at least one of Mitch Daniels, Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, or Jeb Bush be rethinking his decision not to run?

No. We should have been finished with this nonsense weeks ago, but let’s quickly review why this makes no sense. For starters, the filing deadline for New Hampshire is this Friday. Florida’s deadline is next Monday, and South Carolina’s deadline is a week from today. It doesn’t matter how undecided or uncommitted primary voters are if the new candidates aren’t going to be on the ballot. Thanks to Florida’s primary re-scheduling, there is even less time to organize a campaign in the early states, and New Hampshire will probably schedule its primary for January 10. Put another way, there are ten weeks left until the Iowa caucuses. Anyone trying to start up a campaign at this late date would be guaranteeing his own defeat. This pointless chatter was mildly amusing two months ago, but now it’s just sad.

The only question would be whether there is time for another candidate to establish himself, raise funds, and establish an effective campaign. But those details have nothing to do with the obvious lack of enthusiasm for the Republican presidential candidates.

Oh, well, if that’s “the only question,” there’s no problem. A lack of enthusiasm for the current field doesn’t mean that there is room for new candidates. The race may be “fluid” in that voters keep shifting from one anti-Romney candidate to another, but it isn’t realistically open to new candidates, and it’s silly to suggest that it might be.

I raised the possibility last spring that no one would get enough delegates to put him over the top and that we might wind up with a brokered convention (the wet dream of all political junkies). Granted that possibility seems less likely now, but it still exists. There is always the chance that, if the convention becomes hopelessly deadlocked, the convention might turn to someone who didn’t actively campaign for the nomination. I’ll admit that there appears to be a very small likelihood of that happening, but . . . . This is an open invitation to GOM to bring us all up to snuff on Warren G. Harding. Take it away, GOM.

With respect to the idea of a brokered convention, I should point out that the Republican Party is operating under new rules this election cycle, which may increase the possibility of a deadlocked nominating process. All states that have primaries and caucuses prior to April 1, 2012 (and there are 30 by my count) must apportion delegates based on the respective vote totals of the candidates. After March 31, it’s winner take all, just as in the past. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_Party_(United_States)_presidential_primaries,_2012 Florida, where Romney may do well, may have its delegate total cut in half because it fiddled around and changed the date of its primary.